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Incarceration

Life

We listen in as Payton Smith tries to make sense of her mother’s imprisonment; she asks her other family members when her mother will be home and what it will be like. This piece was produced by Chana Joffe-Walt. Photo: Transom.org

Business

A new nonprofit is building affordable housing by rehabbing foreclosed and abandoned houses that were slated for landfill. Also in this episode: Helen Roy is trying to keep her native language, Ojibwe, alive.

War

The debate over the future of Guantanamo Bay continues. In this hour, we look back at another time when controversial prisoners were moved to the US, and what that meant to one young boy who lived near the camp.Also in this episode: for the last three years, we have been following the story of one Gunatanamo Bay detainee, Mr. Al Ghizzawi, through his lawyer, Candace Gorman.

History

Life

Luke Ashley was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and for three years he was in and out of mental hospitals. Because he had a drug problem, he also was in and out of the criminal justice system. He was sentenced to time in a state-run substance abuse program - but there was no space for him. So Luke went to jail, and ended up committing suicide. Dick Gordon talks with Luke's mother, Tricia Ashley. Also on the show: memories of a milkman.

Education

One young man has begun taking classes at Morehouse College this past school year, and he is quite an unlikely freshman. At the ago of 14, Jeremy Lee was convicted on an armed robbery charge and sentenced to four years in youth detention. However, he made up his mind to finish high school while he was locked up. The year he graduated high school, Jeremy was the only juvenile inmate to get a traditional diploma from the youth facility in Georgia. Jeremy was accepted to Morehouse where he is majoring in biology with hopes of becoming a neurosurgeon. also in this episode: remembering Bop City.

Life

Over the past 10 years, the number of inmates across the US who are over 50 years of age has skyrocketed. Dick Gordon traveled to McCain Correctional Hospital in Raeford, NC, to speak with several of the aging inmates. The four men he interviewed have a variety of ideas about what should happen to them in "the system" as they age. Also on the show: post-election violence in Kenya.

War

Sarmad Ali grew up in Baghdad dreaming of coming to the U.S. His dream came true in 2004, when he came to New York to study journalism. Baghdad was volatile then, so it was hard to leave home - but now his decision is even harder to bear. Sarmad's father went missing in Baghdad in December 2006. Also on the show: a daughter tries to get her aging father out of prison.

Life

Deborah Jiang Stein grew up knowing that she was adopted. But when she was in her teens, she discovered that she was born in a prison and had lived there during her early life. Her world then began to spin out of control, and she started to run with a tough crowd, breaking the law regularly. After getting into a lot of trouble in her early 20s, she finally decided that it was time to change her life. Also in this episode, Heather Haskins had never seen her parents work together. In fact, they didn't really get along well at all.But when she was just a kid, her dad had come by her mother's house to pick them up for dinner. Just as they were about to leave, a stranger started to attack the entire family. Heather's mother and father worked together to defend the family, and they all survived the attack.